Saturday, March 21

You know what I'm talking about.Some Guild chats are a pit of silence until someone dings, after which it's Gratzes all around for a minute, with maybe one or two trailing behind because they were in a hefty battle a minute or so.The inevitable "Gratz fest" that ensues when you "ding" and all your Guild-mates are informed of this recurring feat. I'm sure you've felt the guilt of not seeing the ding! message for a good friend who got congratulated by everyone but you, or been annoyed by someone who gets upset when he doesn't get Gratzed! for each of his first 10 levels of his latest must-be-in-Guild-immediately alt that goes from one to ten in one play-session.

Vanguard Saga of Heroes has a blogging system that takes a screenshot of your fifth, tenth, fifteenth and consequently each level as well as at certain specific times like First Server-wide Discovery of an item, or the First Server-wide Kill of a monster.

Warhammer Online takes the blogging a step further with the Tome of Knowledge where everything your character does is logged. How many Goblins you've slain, which coordinates on which map you stepped on, number of this, number of that. When I played it, the Tome wasn't accessible outside the game but someone either got a bright idea or someone finally got around to checking 1.5 years of Closed EU Beta feedback and so an online version you could check on the web was in the pipelines, somewhere.

You're probably seeing where I'm going with this.Why is it that Guild chats don't report you slaying the Big Baddy in the Deep Dark Dungeon rather than, or in addition to, the old Ding! You've just increased your powers by 3% and mob-strength has been adjusted by 4% to compensate.Personally I'd much rather see a proclamation passing by when a Guild-Team reached the pinnacle of a dungeon-crawl than those incessant ding! messages.Of course you don't wantmember1 has just defeated Big Bad Mob Amember3 has just defeated Big Bad Mob Amember6 has just defeated Big Bad Mob Amember2 has just defeated Big Bad Mob Amember4 has just defeated Big Bad Mob Amember5 has just defeated Big Bad Mob A

cluttering up your guild chat either, but maybe aBig Bad Mob A was defeated by the forces of <yourguild>

when more than one member of your guild is involved, with a separate log entry that's reviewable is possible. And maybe the occasional

member237 has just created the world's first Knife of Ogreslaying +9

I'd find this way more interesting information than the Dings. I'm also at a bigger 'sugar high' when I've just killed Big Baddy then when I suddenly have rays of light shooting out of every bodily orifice accompanied by some sound effects, in the middle of a KillTenRats quest.I also think it might give more food for conversation and a sense of who's doing what in the guild then the current standard of information provides.EverQuest II does this already in a way. They have lots of Guild-chat information that can be toggled on/off both on a guild-wide and a personal level. There's a separate tab in the Guild Window showing a log of who did what when as well as contributions and that kind of stuff.I never had a chance to really play with WAR's Guild management system which was reputed to be pretty advanced, but so far I haven't seen a single system that came as close as EQ-II's Guild system.

Would this seem more fun/useful/informative to you or would this be to intrusive? I.e. would you feel it invades your privacy? More than the usual "Location" field in the Guild/Friends rosters that tell anyone who wants to know where you are?

8 comments:

Great idea! I would be happy to see that my guildies have just defeated a boss of some kind, doesn't even have to be the end boss, just any boss along route in whatever instance they are in, be even better if it showed epic drops and showed when a crafter has succesffuilyy completed their next crafting layer - that kind of info is handy to the whole guild.

The whole grats thing can get very tiring espicially during those first few levels, I tend to keep my alts out of any guild in AoC until I've hit at least 20 for partly that reason and because the nature of AoC espicially during those first 20 lvls is pretty much solo play.

I have written about six comments on this by now, and cancelled them all. I do think it is a very nice idea. But my comment didn't manage to go beyond 'Gratz on the nice idea'. There is a whole lot more about guild interaction I am thinking about. It deserves a 'ideal MMO, part 6: guilds and grouping'. Except that part 6 is already about being hardcore.

I'd love to read your Part 6: Guilds and Grouping. My own part 6 would've been Casual Hardcore (long term goals achievable through 45-60 minute content chunks) so that might bite with yours. Guess I'll have to do my Part 7 on classes first, as both your topics might impact my #6.I also want to do a redux on part 5 to make it conciser, more readable and more workable :-)Busy nights ahead for me. Say, when's your next trip to the States coming?